After they had tied him to the stake but before they lit the fire, Hatuey, an Indian leader, was offered a spiritual reprieve by a Spanish priest. Would he like to ensure the certain passage of his soul to heaven by embracing Christianity? he was asked.

Hatuey contemplated the proposal. “Are there people like you in heaven?” he replied. When the priest reassured him that there were, Hatuey responded that he would prefer to go to hell, where he would not know such cruel men.

Hatuey died 500 years ago, on the island of Cuba. The people he wanted, at all costs, to avoid–even at the risk of eternal damnation–were the Spanish conquistadors.

The Indian leader’s death was instrumental in shaping the seminal beliefs of one man: Bartolomé de las Casas. He was a slave owner-turned-Bishop-turned-chronicler who waged a life-long battle against the murderous injustices meted out to South American Indians by the colonists.

‘The spectrum of missionary work around the world covers three quite different attitudes, and much in between,” says Stephen Corry, Director of Survival International. ‘There are those, like Bartolomé who view their mission as one of standing with the downtrodden against the oppressors; others see their job as extending the imperial power of their church; still others are focused on saving human souls at whatever human cost.”

As “protector of Indians,” de las Casas was one of the first missionaries to uphold the rights of the oppressed and protect the lives of indigenous peoples.
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A contemporary of Christopher Columbus, de las Casas had travelled in 1502 to La Española, the Caribbean island which now comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which at the time was inhabited by the indigenous Taínos people. On landing, the Spanish settlers already on shore reportedly told the new arrivals, “The island is doing well, because much gold is being mined.”

Initially he settled as a merchant and encomendero–an Indian slave owner–on “a hill almost encircled by a beautiful and sparkling little river,” and recounted that “these people are the most guileless, the most devoid of wickedness.”

If the Indians were devoid of wickedness, the conquistadors made up for it. It is thought that when the conquistadors arrived in the Americas, there were 100 million inhabitants. 90 percent died on contact, many succumbing to diseases, to which they had no immunity, brought by the Europeans.

Those who didn’t die from imported disease were treated with “strange cruelty: by the aggressive invaders. They fed Indian babies to dogs, hunted adults for sport, and roasted men alive. “They think no more of killing ten or twenty Indians for a pastime, or to test the sharpness of their swords,” wrote de las Casas, continuing:

“One day … the Spanish dismembered, beheaded or raped three thousand Indian people. They cut off the legs of the children that ran before them. They poured people full of boiling soup. I saw all the above things … and numberless others.”

The systematic eradication of indigenous culture is still one of the most potent weapons for the oppression of tribal peoples.

De las Casas also saw, with rare insight, the ulterior motive of many conquistadors. Though the Spanish carried the Requerimiento–a royal document that outlined Spain’s divinely ordained right to sovereignty–into every battle, de las Casas believed that spreading the word of God was largely a ruse: an expedient mask. Ambition, not altruism, was the driving force; gold, not God, was their goal.

He believed that the conquistadors slashed and slaughtered their way like “ravening wild beasts” across the “New World” not solely in homage to Christ, but to “swell themselves with riches.” He suspected they had crossed the Atlantic not only to spread the word of the Lord, but to find the gold that washed through the rivers of Amazonia, and the minerals that lay beneath their rampaging feet. “Our work,” de las Casas said, was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy.” The conquistadors destroyed lives and lands, and they told the Indians that to save their souls, they would need to become Christians.

The systematic eradication of indigenous culture is still one of the most potent weapons for the oppression of tribal peoples. The religious zeal of some extreme evangelist groups today is such that they still promulgate the same line: people are condemned to hell unless they adopt Christianity.

In extreme examples, contemporary missionary organizations like the New Tribes Mission have set out to force the first contact with tribal peoples, with devastating consequences.

“Whether or not tribal peoples die in the process from alien illnesses seems to be relatively unimportant to some missionary groups when compared to securing heavenly eternity,” says Stephen Corry.

If the greed of the conquistadors knew no bounds, neither did the integrity, outrage, or courage of de las Casas. Revolted by the hypocrisy of men who proclaimed pious inspiration while indulging in the horrors of hell, he was struck by a group of Dominican priests who asked the conquistadors, “Tell me, by what right do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? Are they not men?”

De las Casas reformed his views, giving up his Indian slaves around 1515, and set about exposing the lies. He felt morally bound to inform the Spanish court what was being carried out in the name of Christ.

“So as not to keep criminal silence concerning the ruin of numberless souls and bodies that these persons cause,” he wrote, “I have decided to print some of the innumerable instances I have collected in the past and can relate with truth.”

The man who sang the first mass held in the Americas was also one of the first to defend the lives and lands of the continent’s indigenous peoples.

These truths grew to become extensive writings about the mistreatment of the Indians–one of the most famous being “A Short Account of The Destruction of the Indies”–and were instrumental in prompting King Charles V to issue his “New Laws” in 1542, which abolished slavery and the encomienda system, and resulted in the liberation of thousands of slaves.
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Today, de las Casas is thought of as an early human rights’ activist. He is also considered by some as a father of liberation theology, a movement conceived in the early 1960s which believes that the Church should act to bring about social change.

“The liberation missionaries, from the 1960s on, saw their Christian work as de las Casas saw his,’’ says Stephen Corry. “They did not believe that they were working to convert the heathens, but to help those in need. De las Casas was very much in the vanguard of this missionary approach.”

Such beliefs are often held, however, at great personal cost. De las Casas suffered the disapproval, anger, and threats to his life of many of his contemporaries; many missionaries since him have been murdered for their humane principles.

De las Casas was driven not by a self-regarding agenda but by a deeply-rooted sense of justice. “There are many others like them, who stand shoulder to shoulder with tribal peoples. But sometimes they pay the highest price for their compassion,” says Stephen Corry.

The man who sang the first mass held in the Americas was also one of the first to defend the lives and lands of the continent’s indigenous peoples. De las Casas knew the Indians were not inferior to their oppressors. He knew that “all the peoples of the world are men”–rational human beings, part of a single common humanity. “For all people of these our Indies are human … and to none are they inferior,” he said.

“I shall do my endeavor, if God grant me life,” he wrote. He was granted 92 years of life. Until his death in 1566 in a Madrid convent, he worked to end the racist oppression of South American Indians, and continued to decry the hypocrisy and cruelty of the conquistadors.

Joanna Eede is a writer, author and editorial consultant to Survival International with a particular interest in the relationship between man and nature and tribal peoples. She has created and edited three environmental books, including Portrait of England (Think Publishing, 2006) and We are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples (Quadrille, 2009).

One comment for Joanna Eede: All Peoples of the World are Men

Comment by Eric on May 10, 2012 at 3:47 pm

I applaud the spirit of the article, and would be interested in knowing more about ways to hem in the will to empire of groups like New Tribes.

However, as a historian, I think it goes a bit far to say Las Casas’s integrity, outrage, and courage “knew no bounds.” He never questioned the sovereign right of the Spanish crown to impose and enforce law on an alien people, including canon law, tithe, hell, and confession. Highly recommend the movie “Even the Rain,” where the debate about Las Casas’s radicalism is explored as a film-within-a-film.